Happy Birthday Grandma!

Yesterday I got to see all of my cousins, aunt, uncles and Poppa and Grandma! Today I had my best friend Marin’s birthday party with my other friends Anna and Grace.

He said

What a whirlwind week! We went right from wrapping up the Home County festival right into layout of the Wolfe Island Music Festival program. There wasn’t much time for relaxing when there was a full week of work in there too. Danielle and Emelia were back to the usual seeing me come home from work, and dive into the program in the evenings.

Thankfully this one is a much, easier process and relatively smaller and therefore easier to assemble. And as of right now, the final proof has been sent out to the person who needs to okay it, and then off it goes to the printer, first thing tomorrow morning! Thus ending the two major graphic design projects I work on during the year, over and above my very busy and rewarding job at Apple. All that is left is to go to this beautiful festival set on Wolfe Island and sit back and enjoy the music and time with my beautiful girls.

Which brings up… Dad mentioned yesterday when we were over that he had seen a trailer up for sale near their house that he thought we might like. We went to check it out on our way home and both Danielle and I instantly fell in love with it. It’s a lightweight fibreglass trailer like a Boler or Trillium that have seen in the past and it looks like it has been very well maintained. And the price isn’t too bad either. The trouble is… we’re not sure we have the cash for something like that right now, sadly. Too bad, it would have been the perfect thing for our week off.

Which reminds me, yesterday was a combination birthday part for both Mom and an overdue one for Aaron. We got together over at Mom and Dad’s in the afternoon, and then had dinner together at Casesy’s afterwards. It was the first time we had all been together since the Disney trip and it was really nice. We actually let Emelia stay up well past her bedtime to enjoy the extra time with her cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents.

The other exciting thing going on in our lives is that I have applied for the position of Lead Genius at our store. There is an opening, and since I want to show I am interested in growing beyond the Creative role, I thought I’d toss my hat into the ring. It’s not that I don’t love my job as a Creative – anything but. But, I do want to grow and take on new and exciting challenges. And with this opening it feels like now is the time is as good as any. Even if I don’t get the position, I tried, and have an amazing job I love to fall back on.

That about sums up my week… after a long day at work, and dinner after with our Creative Team, I want nothing more than to sit down on the couch and spend some quality boob-tube time with Danielle on the couch… That is after I shred off dinner with Jillian Michaels for 25 minutes.

She said

We are winding up one long and chaotic week. With Home County over it feels like a couple days before I fully recover, but we were dealing with a whack of ‘fun’ of home ownership this week. In the middle of the heat wave of the week and a half ago our AC was not cooling the house and after getting it checked we found out that it was on its last legs and likely not going to ever cool again. We had someone come to the house only 6 weeks before that to fill the freon and 6 weeks later we were down enough that it was not cooling, even adding more in did not make a difference. We were sweating and filling the house with borrowed fans to keep cool.

So on Thursday we had a sales rep come from Reliance and look at rental options. Paying outright for a new AC unit plus install was not an option and since the lifespan of appliances, furnaces and AC units are getting shorter and shorter we saw no real sense on owning it outright. With all the information in hand we lucked out with an opening the next day and the AC unit was installed. Thanks to my amazing father-in-law he was able to come over a couple time this week to help out since I avoid having people in the house while I am alone with the daycare children.

So that was the big repair and something we will be paying for, for what seems like a lifetime! But we have AC back, just in time for the weather to drop drastically, it feels more like early fall than summer. But that was not the only fun this week. Have I mentioned being a home owner is stressful at times?

About 6 weeks ago our dryer that had been slowly losing heat and taking longer and longer to dry clothes finally stopped kicking out heat. So after wearing out our welcome at the Teeter family laundry mat we finally got it fixed. Tuesday he came over, all fine and great the bloody thing decided that for the first time in 6 weeks to finally kick out heat. That lasted for the length of the repair person being here, by the time I tried to put a load in the dryer we were back to 7 hours to dry one load of clothes. Call the repair person and back he came on Thursday. This time some parts were replaced and we have a dryer again.

So sad I am that excited about this, but to cut my long list of to-dos down to a quicker task is just one more thing that gets me caught up on the growing list of chores.

That was our fun for the week, lots and lots of people in and out of the house and lots of money spent.

With all that ‘fun’ done we could move into the weekend. John had another Saturday off so we enjoyed that day as a family. Took the morning a bit easy and then brought Emelia to swim class and spent the rest of the afternoon having a day together. Emelia really needed it, just our attention on her. She takes so much of this daycare business in stride but there are days that it is just too much for her to have to share her mommy and she just needs some one on one time.

We had the evening together with John’s entire family, I really cherish these times with his family. Over the years my family has moved apart and I have only my dad and sister who I just don’t get to see as often as we would like so these family gatherings with John’s family really mean the world to all of us.

After a long visit and after Emelia’s bedtime we made our way home, we stopped by the trailer that Doug and Helen had mentioned to us that was for sale, and yes it is perfect. It is in such amazing shape — whomever owned this loved it very much. It would be perfect for us. Emelia and I went back today in the light of day and peaked in the windows and took some more pictures. And yes she is now in love too. One day… Maybe?

That was the crazy week that was, I am thankful that this is my last week of work until I am off for a week. We are only two weeks away from our annual Wolfe Island weekend and we just cannot wait.